Ivory Tower - Blog Posts

A New Meaning of the Ivory Tower

This kind of turn can begin anywhere, anytime — like right this moment, here and now — wearing the mask of pragmatism and accommodation: let’s not make waves, let’s not use words or make speeches that draw attention, let’s make friendly connections to state legislators, let’s rename that program, let’s quietly defund that one center. Let’s not grant tenure to that person. Let’s encourage that professor to retire. Let’s look for a leader who is acceptable to interests that really hate the university and its values. Let’s take the money for an independent institute that pushes far-right economic philosophy. Let’s take away some governance from faculty, because they tend to provoke our enemies too much. Let’s compromise. Let’s be realistic.

Burke, T. (2022, Juni 30). Academia: Waiting for Heideggers. Eight by Seven. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-waiting-for-heideggers

We think it's necessary, that not much can be done, that it's just this one little thing, that it's not that important, that we're just protecting our people, at least most of them, forgetting that it won't stop there. We are gradually eroding our freedom one tiny step at a time. We are leaving people behind one tiny step at a time.

To understand what happens from the perspective of those we leave behind through compromise, we should consider the concept of slow violence.

By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. [...] a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.

Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194

So what can we actually do? Well.

Watch for those who will come forward with the aim of making us easier to deliver on a platter to some future monstrosity, and block their path whenever they step forward. Start building the foundations for a maze, a moat, a fortress, a barricade, for becoming as hard to seize as possible. Time for the ivory tower to take on new meaning.

Burke, T. (2022, Juni 30). Academia: Waiting for Heideggers. Eight by Seven. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-waiting-for-heideggers